Some Words from Students in Al Quds

In today’s session with students from the university we discussed a range of topics. We talked about favourite TV shows (Top Gear was in there) as well as music we like listening to. 

The students also wanted to talk about what we (the visitors to Palestine) thought were the positive and negative attributes of the country. 

But most interesting was something a student said about what he would like to tell others about Palestine. He said “I have a message in me. It is we have a country. And it is called Palestine.” 

Another student wanted to share his favourite poet with us. Tamim Barghouti. He recited the poem ‘In Al Quds’.  He wanted us to share it. 

In Al Quds 

By our lover's house we passed but we were turned away…
By the enemy's laws and walls
A blessing it could be for me I said…
When you see it, what do you see?
What you cannot bear is what you see…
When from the side of the road its houses appear…
When every soul sees its lover …
And every absentee surrenders to happiness…
To see him before their meeting is her secret as much as it is his…
Even her happiness does not give her safety…
When old Al-Quds you see once…
When the eye shall see it, where ever it turns the eye shall see it…
In Al-Quds… a cabbage vender from Georgia…
Tiring of his wife… a holiday he plans or his walls he shall paint…
In Al-Quds a Torah and an old man from upper Manhattan did come…
Its codes and rules a Polish kid teaches…
In Al-Quds an Abyssinian policeman closes a road in the market…
A machinegun on a twenty years old settler’s shoulder is carried…
A skullcap greeting the Wailing Wall…
Blond European tourists, Al-Quds they never see…
Photos they take for each other or with a reddish woman vender…
In Al-Quds soldiers with their boots as if over the clouds they creep…
In Al-Quds on the asphalt we prayed…
In Al-Quds. Others are in Al-Quds, except you…